Peter Fullagar - Virginia Woolf in Richmond

Contents

Photographs

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank all those who made this book possible, especially The Society of Authors, Sussex University, Penguin Random House and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for permission to include extracts from the published works of both Virginia and Leonard Woolf.

Im grateful too for invaluable mentoring from Cheryl Robson at Aurora Metro and to Ferroccio, Angie and Piers for your support and encouragement. Special thanks must go to Paula Maggio for writing the foreword as well as Emma Woolf for her input and inspiration.

Thanks also to my family and friends for your support through the writing of this book, which is dedicated to my father, Gordon Fullagar (1942-2017).

Foreword

by Paula Maggio

Richmond often fails to get the respect it deserves from Virginia Woolf scholars and readers. You wont find it in the index of Virginia Woolf A to Z by Mark Hussey, the premiere reference book for Woolf scholars. You will hear it characterized as a place Woolf disliked. And if you made a pilgrimage to the very Richmond building where Virginia and Leonard lived the longest Hogarth House, located at 24 Paradise Road you may have failed to notice it at all. I made that trip from London on an overcast, rainy day in June 2016, meeting Emma Woolf, great-niece of the literary couple, in a small caf across the street from the Richmond train station. Ironically, Virginias famous quote used by many food establishments and food writers One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well decorated the main wall of the caf, suggesting a connection to Virginia but not explaining it. From the caf, Emma and I embarked on a brief walking tour of Richmond. When we arrived at Hogarth House, we were chagrined to see that it was suffering from neglect. A thick overgrown vine covered much of the buildings front exterior at the ground level, almost completely obscuring the blue plaque marking it as an historic site where the couple lived from 1915-1924 and where they founded the Hogarth Press. Unpainted plywood covered the main entrance and its sidelights.